9 May 2025 |2 – 5 p.m. | Rose Library
Asher Lecture Series
Older Jews and the Holocaust Symposium
Speakers:
Joanna Sliwa (Historian, Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference)
Elizabeth Anthony (Director, Visiting Scholar Programs, Jack Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC)
Michael Geheran (Deputy Director, Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, United States Military Academy at West Point, New York)
Older Jews and the Holocaust is a project comprising an edited volume (forthcoming with Wayne State University Press, 2025), a one-day symposium at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a two-day research workshop at the Wiener Holocaust Library. The project seeks to address the overlooked experiences of elderly Jews during and after the Holocaust.
While many older Jews were murdered, others survived and rebuilt their lives. This project goes beyond the typical focus on their vulnerability and death, highlighting the continuity of their prewar lives through their suffering under the Nazis and their postwar experiences. It explores the perspectives of elderly Jews in various geographic locations, examining how they navigated the trauma and how families, communities, and organizations responded to their needs.
This project’s goal is to promote new research, utilize underused archival sources, and increase both scholarly and public awareness of the significance of old age in shaping the Holocaust experience.
This project is undertaken with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance and the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, as well as the Ernest Hecht Charitable Foundation, and is co-published by Wayne State University Press and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Clark Symposium sponsored by the Asher Family Fund